Mac PCB and Case?

[10centNickle]

I'm a heavy Mac user, and mechanical keyboards always are in Windows format.  Are there any Mac cases, pcbs, and plates available on the market?

[Maledicted]

I'm a heavy Mac user, and mechanical keyboards always are in Windows format.  Are there any Mac cases, pcbs, and plates available on the market?

What are you looking for, specifically? The only major difference I know off offhand between a Windows and Mac layout is the Windows/Command and Alt/Option keys being swapped. If you have a board that can be entirely remapped in the firmware, these can be swapped on any such board. Then it would come down to finding caps with the differing legends.

Matias, for some reason, seems to have cornered the market for Mac-oriented mechanical keyboards. They offer more options for Mac users than Windows users.

Unicomp sells variants of their Model Ms with Mac mappings and caps, though that seems to be lacking in their newer retooled variants.

I have used Apple keyboards with Windows a reasonable amount and Windows key positioning bothered me being moved one position to the left on the left side of the board, but that still wasn't a dealbreaker for someone who presses it many time a day.

[10centNickle]

Yes, but the problem is a Mac layout has a fn, ctrl, alt, and command on the left side of the space bar, and a command, alt, and arrow keys on the right.

[Findecanor]

Well, that particular layout is one that you'll not find with mechanical key switches. Mechanical switches are too large for half-height arrow keys.
Matias does have a couple mechanical keyboards with smaller arrow keys though, but they are not nearly as small.
Historically though, different Apple keyboards have had many different bottom rows.

Full-size Mac keyboards have typically had three keys on the left and three keys on the right of the space bar, and that is often supported by PCBs for custom keyboards. Then what each key does, is up to how you decide to configure it.
Keycaps for Mac are quite common in custom keycap sets also.

[Maledicted]

Yes, but the problem is a Mac layout has a fn, ctrl, alt, and command on the left side of the space bar, and a command, alt, and arrow keys on the right.

So you mean like on the "Magic" keyboard, with fn all of the way on the left? I hate when laptops do that. I always instinctively go for ctrl in the bottom left corner for hotkeys. Have there really been any other desktop keyboards that do that? I don't think that even Apple has made many desktop keyboards that are set up that way. Is it something that you prefer?

[tp4tissue]

If you don't use Mac's first party keebs on a mac, the experience is 45% less Magical, leading to 23.8% lower productivity..

[Maledicted]

The Matias Ergo Pro has fn on the far left side of the board. That might be the closest you'll come to what you want.

If you don't use Mac's first party keebs on a mac, the experience is 45% less Magical, leading to 23.8% lower productivity..

I think I would be perfectly happy with 0% productivity if it meant not having to use Apple's cardboard-esque keyboards.

[Riverman]

Apple used to have some decent scissor switch keyboards, about 10 years ago.  The thing I hate about them is that they silently revise things and don't change the name or model number, so one might be good, and the next one you try is, like you said, Maledicted, about like typing on a piece of cardboard.  After spending way too much money on way too many keyboards, I just bought a Realforce Mac Edition, swapped the 30g domes out with the 45g domes from an RGB, and I couldn't be happier.  If I had bought one of those to begin with, I'm sure I would have been hundreds of dollars ahead, but then what's the fun in that? 

[Maledicted]

Apple used to have some decent scissor switch keyboards, about 10 years ago.  The thing I hate about them is that they silently revise things and don't change the name or model number, so one might be good, and the next one you try is, like you said, Maledicted, about like typing on a piece of cardboard.  After spending way too much money on way too many keyboards, I just bought a Realforce Mac Edition, swapped the 30g domes out with the 45g domes from an RGB, and I couldn't be happier.  If I had bought one of those to begin with, I'm sure I would have been hundreds of dollars ahead, but then what's the fun in that? 

I have used a lot of scissor switches over the years. I can't say I particularly like any of them anymore. Some are better than the average traditional dome, most aren't. I'm pretty sure I would take any decent dome with slider board over any scissor switch mechanism, but I'm sure I haven't tried every single one. I remember liking the Compaq keyboard that came with my first desktop computer, which had scissor switches for some reason. I could pull it back out of the pile and compare, but I don't even like MX blue anymore ... so.

Well, I'm sure you would have needed a crystal ball to know exactly what you were looking for without trying different things until something stuck. It seems like sometimes it just requires a little stumbling around in the dark.